Well, we barely got started before this uncomfortable unwanted break from everything came. The changes I wrote about in my last post has given the portfolio a kind of upswing, so that looks promising going forward.
January was still kind of a bad beat so a few more months are probably needed to get back in black. Fingers crossed it doesn’t take too many months before we even get the chance.
Here are the numbers for 2020 so far. Take care out there.
Considering the results for the last 12 months, it was clear that something had to be done. Taking bad luck and bad runs into account wasn’t enough to explain the poor performance from too many tipsters in the portfolio and considering the time I put in to follow them all it was far from worth it.
So, I’ve made some changes.
The results have been decent this season (+2.7% ROI), but the service doesn’t really suit me. It relies too much on low odds bets for my liking and really taking advantage of them requires multiples and therefore access to several soft books, which I don’t have.
An oldie but no more a goldie in the portfolio, since the returns (-4.1% ROI) haven’t really lived up to expectations in a long time and my overall strategy to take a break with horse racing makes this one a no-no going forward.
I find this service hard to get my head around really. While they keep beating the closing odds at almost 70% of the time, they’ve either been extremely unlucky lately with their -14.1% ROI or there’s something else going on. I almost broke the betting bank here and with their focus on English football there’s enough overlap with other tipsters that make it reasonable to skip it in the portfolio from now on. I will continue to monitor their results closely though.
Update: BetNimble recently decided to shut down their service, so I guess we’ll never know the true quality of the service. They refunded all yearly payments as stated in their terms though, so fair play to them.
Abandoning Football elite doesn’t make any real impact since the season bets have already been posted, but I won’t include it in the portfolio in the future since I don’t like locking up parts of the betting bank for so long.
This was definitely the easiest tipster to kick out. After a year of overall poor results where he tried to go PGA only, but gave that one up, got in a dispute with Betting Gods, changed his strategy several times, started a new service on a new tipster platform and being all over the place, but still without making profits. I’m yet to see if I’ll add another golf tipster.
You can see my entire portfolio over here. With fewer tipster and lower odds I’m expecting less volatility and less work but nevertheless more profits. These changes were made mid-February and I hope I’ll have the time to come back soon with an update on how it feels and works out.
It was a strange year betting wise, a year that is a bit hard to draw any bigger conclusions from. I made some costly mistakes, I also made a lot of money before I eventually lost them again.
The whole year ended just below break-even and considering the time I’ve put in to register the 3903 bets during the year, it was a lousy hourly rate.
As you can see in the graph below (which is fetched automatically from Bettin.gs by the way), the first quarter of the year made almost all of the profits while the rest of the year was a struggle.
Well, hats off to two of my long time fighters Nishi Kori and On The Oche, who managed to end up on +7.6% and +4.6% ROI respectively. While for OTO that’s actually a bit below the expected level, it’s nice to see them both in profit for another year. 312 units in from Nishi and 29.6 units from On The Oche.
It’s also nice to see two newcomers deliver instantly. DD Pronostics sits at a +7.3% ROI from his first 286 bets and motaliz is at +5.6% ROI after he was added late in 2019, so just 42 bets from him so far.
Quite a few things to be honest. I made two huge mistakes that are two key takeaways from 2019:
When it comes to The Betting Man, I made the rookie mistake to trial it for a couple of months, then getting right on board after what probably was a hot streak and then paying the price when his picks returned to normal levels, which seem to be losing ones. I stopped following his bets in October and was down -83.3 units (-4.2% ROI). According to RacingProofing.com he might be on his way back, but I don’t feel comfortable following his tips and that’s a good enough reason for me to get off.
For Clear Data Sports, the amount of bets that was produced was enormous. In hindsight it’s a bit hard to believe they can actually find so many weaknesses in one of the betting world’s toughest markets, but in in fact the service’s official numbers made a couple of units profit for the year eventually. My problem was that I didn’t quite catch the recommended odds at all bets and with a high volume service like that, that shows on the bottom line: -94.6 units (-7.8% ROI). I followed from the season started in March until June, just before the all-star break and I’m still following the service, but struggling to find a best way to take advantage of it.
I placed 3906 bets, so just above 10 a day. This will decrease in 2020 since I don’t place horse racing or baseball bets anymore.
2162 of the bets has been placed with Sportmarket and 1335 with Betfair. A very small amount of the bets were placed with soft bookies, particularly darts bets and a sporadic double.
The average odds ended at 12.54, but is just a bit inflated by the golf picks and will be reduce a bit in 2020 without the horse racing. Unless I find another golf tipster of course…
The strike rate of 36.4% will logically increase a bit as well.
Of all the bets that I’ve registered closing odds for, I beat 54.1% of them. I don’t have a target, but I aim much higher that this.
It seemed like many of the tipsters had a rough year and when listening to other punters if seems like they weren’t the only ones. Especially horse racing tipsters with a positive result for 2019 seems hard to find and the only one I followed during 2019, Festival Value Service, ended -35 units (-4.1% ROI). I won’t keep it in the portfolio going forward, which leaves me totally empty from horse racing tipsters for the first time in a long while. I do have a few bew services on my radar, but I honestly can’t see myself following any of them any time soon.
Master Racing Tipster was also with me for 129 bets in 2019 before suddenly closing shops. He was then down -41.2 units (-9.7% ROI), so good riddance I guess, but sad to see him go after several fine years in the portfolio.
My portfolio has turned quite football heavy lately, which I don’t mind since that’s the sport I know the most about numbers and bettingwise. In 2019 I started following BetNimble and while they ended -25 units (-3.5% ROI), they usually crush the closing odds, which make me feel comfortable having them in the portfolio for 2020 as well.
Fut Unver actually had a losing year and I’m really interested to see what 2020 brings there. He has a solid history, but without beating the closing line much of the time. Fingers crossed.
Winabobatoo marches on without making much noise. -15.7 units (-12.5% ROI) from just 31 bets in 2019 and then there’s also Football Elite‘s season bets that will be settled come spring time. (We’re on a nice bet in February as well with Leicester to win the English league cup, so it could show something already in February, jinx, jinx).
When it comes to Scottish Football Bets, I’m not so sure though. His betting style with low odds and multiples doesn’t really fit me and while his long analyses are sometimes interesting, I can’t really be bothered with 1500 words on a 1.4 odds selection. We’ll see. As long as he’s profitable, it’s probably worth it. He was -16.4 units (-1.4% ROI) in 2019 though.
Just a quick mention of Pro Footy Tips as well, who managed to provide 31 tips with lousy results (-61.2 units, -59% ROI) after switching to another platform and then disappearing again. No recommended behaviour.
My only golf tipster, Golf Betting Expert, had a dispute with his partners at Betting Gods which made him go solo. Those kind of things can never be good I think, but I still follow his service despite that and the fact that he was -20.2 units (-2.3% ROI) last year.
I am looking to add another golfer though, since I see both potential and have a big interest in following the sport. The trouble, as always, is to find a reliable, profitable service to follow though. I have a few candidates lined up, so to be continued…
Here’s a total summary for all tipsters that I followed in 2019. A year that will probably be beaten by 2020 by a margin if everything goes as planned.
Going into 2020, here’s what the portfolio looks like in it’s full glory. Good luck to us!
It’s been a while since my last confession. Luckily the irritating trend of red numbers have turned upwards again and at least October’s numbers look rather healthy.
Most tipsters are back to business as usual, even if On The Oche found a rare losing run in October. It’s also been a while since Golf Betting Expert found a winner, but other than that, a nice period of bets.
I’m not sure it’s any reason for anything, but I’ve decided to quit my biggest annoyance The Betting Man prematurely. I just ran out of hope he’ll ever be profitable for me. So if you’re looking for a winning tipster, now is probably the perfect timing to sign up for him. 😉
He finished his era in the portfolio with just a unit up. If we sum up his total performance, he’s down -83 units with and ROI of -4.2% ROI and -55.5% ROC. Good riddance.
This includes the free Value Service bets you get as a Smart Betting club member as well, and those numbers were fantastic in October. Those fantastic numbers lifted the service from a pretty poor Festival service results.
This is also the only horse racing tipster in the portfolio going forward, and I feel very comfortable with that.
This has turned into a pretty active service, since expanding the horizons outside Scotland. If the numbers continues to show profit like this, I’m quite fine with that. 14 units in from 105 bets.
Nothing exciting to see here really. Quite few bets, but also a small loss.
There’s no shortage of place results from the picks, but it’s been a while nice the last winner. It would feel quite nice to get a spike in the results, but until then, we keep grinding the tournaments week by week.
This is a very interesting service to follow if you ask me. The results haven’t been that very impressive so far, but looking at the closing odds compared to what I’m betting at it’s clear how they’re absolutely crushing them from time to time. If that continues it’s clear that they either know a lot or are betting at the same markets as someone who knows a lot. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season, for sure.
The most reliable service by far if you look at the history. Once in a while a losing run hits even the best ones and that’s what happened here for a short period of time, 10 bets or something.
What’s worse is that I’ve been limited at my favorite darts bookie to a point that it’s almost impossible to get any decent bets on.
A decent start to the season for Fut Unver. Fingers crossed he keeps grinding away those home wins for the rest of the season as well.
A fantastic start to the basketball season. My target for the service is 5% ROI and with a start like this, that should absolutely be within reach.
A few bets, a few units down. The season has just started for this service and I expect more action further down the road. No reason for any deeper analysis just yet.
The greatest thing with this little table is that horse racing shows profit.
If everything goes according to plan I’m going to add another football tipster in December. I’ve been tracking results and odds movements and availability for a while and it’s checking all boxes so far. More details later…
Nope, it wasn’t meant to be this month either. It was looking good for the most of the month, but a poor last weekend pulled me down below zero, so a few units lost again. My betting bank is well prepared for drawdowns, but it’s quite annoying to keep spending all this time for nothing.
In total I placed 308 bets, staking 1210 units. With a strike rate of 33.4% the return on capital was -3.3%.
Let’s go through the tipsters one by one this time and see how it went.
You can see an overview of all tipsters in the portfolio on the portfolio page.
The most active service in the portfolio this month is fighting hi way back from the red. A nice profit makes me feel a little better about the service, which has been a disappointment so far, to say the least. Still down 84.4 units since he was included in the portfolio.
The reliable tennis tipster had a pretty anonymous month, more or less breaking even in the end.
If there’s one horse racing tipster I feel reliable it’s this one from Kieran Ward. This month shows a healthy and steady ROI as so often before. This month’s tips all came from York.
A little rough start to the season for this veteran tipster even if the month started out well. He had a few really poor days after that, which left a mark this month. Nothing much to worry about, these things happen. I do appreciate his emails coming in explaining why things went wrong and his plan to avoid it going forward. Not all tipsters do this, but it really helps keeping faith when things don’t go exactly to plan.
Now here’s a bad run that just won’t give up. Another 40 units down the drain as GBE’s failed to find a winner in months. A few places has kept the results up, but we’re in desperate need for a winner to get back on track here. Long term profit still shows >10% ROI though, so no reason to draw too big conclusions.
Mike Lorenzo-Vera finishing one stroke behind the winner but still placing outside the money last weekend sums the current trend up pretty well.
The first month in the portfolio and it’s a blood red one. Not the start I hoped for naturally. What’s interesting though is that almost every bet has crushed the market. 73% of all bets where better than the closing odds by a margin, so still high hopes for this service. Fortunately, the season is long.
Good old darts tipster On The Oche keeps delivering the profits. Almost 20 units from just 14 bets makes me wish there were more darts matches in the world. A quite alarming thing though is that I’ve been limited from two of the bookies that I’ve used to place many of the dart bets, which will make it harder for me to find the best odds.
All in all, a couple of tipsters had a rough month while other had decent ones. Nothing really stands out on the positive side, so the month ends in red and we’re aiming for profits in September instead.
September means the start of tips from both Futunver and Winabobatoo, so we’ll get to see more bets from now until spring, and with that hopefully less variance. Good luck to me!
July sees the fourth straight losing month for the portfolio, which probably is the longest downturn so far. The end of the month seemed to lead the way out of it, but it wasn’t enough to keep the month from staying in the red. Luckily, I’m still in profit for the year and I both hope and belive better times are ahead.
Nishi Kori was the star of the show, showing a healthy profit of 57.1 units ( 13.8% ROI). On The Oche also showed green numbers with 6.8 units in profit ( 16.2% ROI). Only 9 bets from him though.
Horse racing once again gave me something to think about as The Betting Man lost 42.7 units (-17.9% ROI) and Festival Value Service lost 20.4 units (-36.4% ROI).
There was not a lot more than a few places to cheer about when it comes to golf. Golf Betting Expert was down 30 units (-46.8% ROI). Football season has finally started and I’ve re-added Scottish Football Bets to the portfolio after a few years out of it. He started with a minor loss of 3.7 units (-1.6% ROI) from 53 bets.
I’ve been forced to remove Trade on Sports from the portfolio due to the tragic fact that I don’t have any exchanges to place the lay bets on anymore. Smarkets and Matchbook never bothered to get a Swedish license at the new year and Betfair recently made the decision to remove all tennis markets for their Swedish customers due to uncertainty about making betting markets available when underaged players are competing (there are quite a few 17 y.o.). I think it’s a weird decision and I hope the markets will return, but until then I need to remove Trade On Sports, or possibly get access to Betfair in another way.
I’ve added a couple of football tipsters for the new season:
– BetNimble is a service I tracked during the last season with impressive results. I look forward to following their tips for real the upcoming season.
– Football Elite is a service I followed many years ago, which nowadays only offers antepost bets from the English leagues. The impact on the portfolio will be very small and the results won’t show until the end of the season.
– Winabobatoo is back. This season is a bit of a special one as there will be more like a traditional betting service, sending out recommended bets, as opposed to the information packed Winabobatoo magazines.
I’m constantly tracking new potential tipsters and while I’m torn between giving up on horse racing in full or stay with my services and potentially add a couple of others that are showing fine results, I’m just gonna keep it as it is for a while – probably until the subscriptions to all services run out.
Nope, my portfolio can’t catch a break for the moment. June was down another 91 units and the profits from March has been more or less been erased. This time The Betting Man started his recovery while all other tipsters showed losses.
It’s frustrating, annoying and outright boring to keep placing all these bets, just waiting for the trends to turn. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that it will turn but it’s a lot of work for nothing while the downturn lasts.
Not much more to say really. For once it was nice to have some racing tipsters in the portfolio. Golf Betting Tipster had a losing month, but all it takes is one winner from him to turn the entire portfolio result around. It’s a weird sport to follow like that. Big winners, but far between.
Trade On Sports hasn’t had a great start since his entry to the portfolio, but I like the setup of the service and I’ve started to follow their football bets as well from July.
I’ve also adjusted the staking for both Nishi Kori and Fut Unver down a bit to balance the portfolio a little better.
On The Oche also showed red numbers, and that’s not often. When it rains, it pours…
I expect July and August to be quite slow months before all action breaks loose in September, but I’ll add a few football tipsters already for July, as I’ve already decided to add them and they’re betting a bit on friendly games and other games that are on during the summer.
Once the seasons get underway I expect more action and with a few new tipsters, there will be more volume and if everything goes as it should, less volatility. Until then, let’s enjoy the summer.
Well, the horrific downturn from April continued a bit into May and that dragged down the results to show a second red month in a row. Two heavy weight tipster was to blame, namely Fut Unver and The Betting Man.
When any of the most active tipsters stands out, either positively or negatively, it’s bound to have an effect on the result. This is of course intentional, since these tipsters are meant to be the most reliable in the portfolio so I want to take advantage of them the best way possible, but it also begs the question wether they’re too heavy relied on.
When thy hit an inevitable losing streak, or if a couple of them do it at the same time, heaven forbid, there’s not much chance for all other tipsters to cover up for their losses. This is a lesson learned, especially since Nishi Kori just hit 12 losers in a row in the beginning of June as well. I will probably adjust the staking plan to make the portfolio less vulnerable in the future, but I’ll write more about that in another post.
I should probably write more about my staking and bank management in general, if anyone’s interested?
Here are the results per tipster for May 2019:
Thankfully Nishi Kori could make up for parts of the losses from Fut Unver and The Betting Man.
I decided to stop following Clear Data Sport after showing no signs of recovery. Time will tell wether that was a wise decision or not, but it was just way too time consuming and with too poor results. Sure, the season is long and they consistently beat the closing line, but my gut feeling tells me they’re on the wrong track and I’ve come to trust my gut feeling pretty well with time. Lesson learned: You can’t paper trade a service too little, and sometimes paper trading isn’t enough. I should have put more effort into real bets for a longer period of time last season.
Speaking of gut feeling – I stopped following Master Racing Tipster a while ago and sure enough a couple of months later he threw in the towel and quit his service. A long running service in my portfolio gone, which just once more shows how hard it is to make profit over time in this strange business.
I’m looking forward to the next season and I will probably up the stakes for DD Pronostics after a decent first basketball season. Not sure how to do with the horse racing tipsters, but a rather strong finish of the year is needed to stay in the portfolio. I’ve also got a number of football tipsters lined up, but I’m not sure which ones that will go straight in the portfolio and which ones will stay on trial for another while.
That will be after the summer though. Until then, we will mostly focus on tennis and horse racing, with a little darts and golf on top. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
Well, the betting gods, or variance, or karma, or whatever you may call it sure took back some of the glory from March. Most tipsters failed to make a profit and it was never really close to being a profitable month.
554 bets is a lot. Almost half of them are baseball bets. Almost half of the losses came there as well, so it’s safe to say we’re not really off to a flying start of the season when it comes to baseball.
Clear Data Sports, who are the ones delivering the baseball tips, were down 57,4 units. The new service Trade On Sports were down 23,1 units and Master Racing Tipster kept losing so much that I finally gave up on him after another 30 units lost. That service is no longer left in the portfolio. It seems I went out just in time, as the losses kept coming for the rest of the month as well. Perhaps he’ll come back to the line up someday, we’ll see. It’s the longest followed service in the portfolio, so quite sad to see him go.
Even On The Oche showed red numbers, as did Golf Betting Expert, Festival Value Service and my recent new tipster The Betting Man, who I have so high expectations for. He hasn’t delivered at all during the short period of time so far, so it’d better turn around soon.
When it comes to Clear Data Sports, I’m gonna have a close look on the numbers the upcoming month. I’ve got a bank of 100 units assigned to the service and I will use that as a stop loss limit. Should the losses keep coming in the same pace, there is probably no reason I should continue following. It’s a very labour intensive service to follow.
As you know, I’m finding it very frustrating every time I see losses accumulating from horse racing, and this month this was the case. April would be nicer without it, but then again the losses will be long forgotten as soon as the numbers turn green again.
There must be som curse for me when it comes to Betfair. I need to look in to history to see how bad it actually is compared to other bookies. Sometimes the bets feel lost beforehand, knowing it’s Betfair I use to place them. 😉
What a month. Most pieces fell into place at the same time and as a result the numbers are better than average.
379 bets and 1816 units placed is pretty much what I’m looking for every month, so to get a +18,9% ROI from that is nice once in a while. I’m looking for about +5-7% ROI in the long run.
I’ve been starting to track the closing odds for every bet I place as well, and it’s nice to see that the ROI for that is bit lower (+13%), even if it looks like I’ve only managed to beat the closing line 46,3% of the times. Obviously, I’ve beaten them when the bet’s won and less often for the lost ones. Also a good sign, I reckon.
Almost all tipsters was profitable. Nishi Kori and Fut Unver did it like it’s business as usual, while Festival Value Service had a couple of great weekends, just like Golf Betting Expert, who got two winners in the same month and loads of profit as the numbers below shows.
My latest addition to the portfolio, The Betting Man, is off to a slow start unfortunately. Hoping for a better month in March for him. Master Racing Tipster is still struggling and I’ve actually lowered the stakes for him from March. That’s probably saved me a few units, and I’m still not convinced he’ll ever bounce back to be honest.
From April, I’m adding Trade on Sports to the portfolio. I’m planning to start following their lay bets in tennis to start with and continue monitoring the other sports they’re offering to see if there’s anything there worth taking up. Will have a closer look at them in the April review I guess.
Baseball season has started, so I’m expecting loads of bets from Clear Data Sport for a good while. It’s the busiest service I follow with around 150 bets/month when active. That combined with that basically all other sports are active as well makes this the busiest period of the year. I like it.
Not sure I like that my portfolio is dominated by horse racing tipsters again though.
Here’s a funny thing. I’ve actually been able to start using a few bookies again, since Sweden’s new licensing system went live this year. I’m using them mostly for the darts odds, but an occasional football or horse racing bet might be placed outside the exchanges or Sportmarket as well if I get the chance.
